You've misunderstood my post.Yeah so? my brother also shared an address with a woman once for over a year as friends (not even fwb)
My guess is that as part of the spousal sponsorship application and to show the relationship is real, they included a period of cohabitation that lasted at least a year and pre-dated the sponsor becoming a PR.
So they may have called themselves out by saying there were in a relationship and common law before he got PR.